Sunday, February 24, 2013

"This edition of
the Blog Banter is forged from suggestions from #tweetfleet members
@KaedaMaxwell, @RocWieler and @TigerlilyFenix.

In a socially-driven
game environment such as EVE Online's, everyone has an agenda. CCP promotes its
products and has an army of volunteers to do the same; corporations and
alliances deliver entertaining recruitment drives, CSM election candidates
solicit for voter favor, bloggers and podcasters opine to their audiences.

In this intricate web of
communication, influence and control, “what part does propaganda play in
your game?”

==========================================

I had not been having much luck coming up with ‘words’
for this one… Propaganda does not work well on those who are capable and
prepared for it. Hence it does not play a ‘part’ as such in my personal game
and HBHI does not propagandize or even advertise. SYJ does not either, what
propaganda they put out is written on the side of their missiles and
projectiles… we send our propaganda the old fashioned way… with DPS!! HAHA!
Anyway…

Then I re-read my post on Mittens the Goonborn v
the EVEborn (Borgin
For the LULZ…) this connected in my mind with my brief, unpleasant yet
sickening foray onto James315’s blog… and my muse cried “Ah HAH!” grabbed my
brain with both hands and squeezed... and the words just started to flow…

Now, you may be asking what I meant by “Propaganda
does not work well on those who are capable and prepared for it”… to wit:

By “capable” I mean a person who is self
confident in his own morals, beliefs and personal understanding of right &
wrong… IE, someone who is comfortable with his understanding of the differences
between Good & Bad as he sees it, his personal Rules-of-Conducts (RoC) as
twere.

By “prepared” I mean a person who looks at all
communication with a care… with a pound or two of the old ‘grain-of-salt’ as
they say… someone who compares what he hears and reads against his own moral
compass and beliefs and RoC and then makes his own decisions.

This person is comfortable going against the
tide of the group or even mass opinion if it does not adhere to his personal
RoC. He accepts that this may put him in danger, that this decision will most
likely have costs and consequences. He accepts these as the cost of personal
integrity. If you ever made a decision that went against your friends, your ‘group’
or your family because of the ‘principle of the thing’… then you know the
persona of whom I speak. However… if you have always followed the herd, stayed
with the group, caved to peer pressure and done-what-yer-told… then you know well
the mind of that great mass of people that propaganda is aimed at, and works on
so well… like these guys here…

The bulk of the Goons (not all, not all) are
just such types I am willing to believe. To stay with the heard, to remain in
the group, to be “accepted” by your peers is a very very strong force in human
nature. Plus keep in mind the “Goon Born” vs the “EVE Born”… Goons are
inculcated into the herd BEFORE they join EVE Online… they, and I quote La
Mittens one-more-time: (excerpt from “The EVE-Born”)

“The
experience of a new Goonswarm player is radically different from that of the
EVE-born.”

”…when they install the
game they are an extension of an existing community [that takes precedence
over the EVE community]…”

“Rather than learning
the basics alone in hisec, on their first day newbie Goons podjump to deep
nullsec. There, they are surrounded by their fellows, ushered into massive
alliance warfleets, mentored by veteran players, and showered with ISK and
ships.” [brackets mine]

Thus being PRE-propagandized and inculcated into
the Goon mindset and culture prior to joining EVE leads to this:

“A
community-born [Goonborn] player is
able to entirely skip the dreaded ‘mining veld in a Bantam’ phase. Instead of a
positive kill/death ratio, external communities place a greater value on enthusiasm
and a willingness to die for the group.”

“In practice, this means
that Goons, Broskis and Redditors can be outright bastards to everyone else
in the EVE - besides their allies, of course - and get away with it. The
game’s normal culture of honor doesn’t apply…” [brackets mine]

That pretty much sums up my argument… If you can
CONTROL a person’s access to information from cradle to grave, (and from virtual
cradle to virtual grave) you can exert a form of ‘mind control’, IE ‘will
control’. If you control what they understand about a given situation, you can
control their reactions to a given situation… and thereby control the mob. And the
political mob and tactical mob (IE Blob) in EVE can be a very powerful force.

There are those who will argue that Goons, being
people in RL who have access to the ‘Net and all it contains cannot be ‘brain
washed’ or ‘mind controlled’ because they have free access to more information
than any other group at any other time in the history of the world… I agree and
this is true, but I am not arguing that they are all poor North Korean Trolls
(not the forum kind, I mean the mindless horde kind) who have never had access
to a radio much less the ‘Net…

My argument is that propaganda’s main weapon, “Go
along with ‘us’ or be cast OUT!” works on mature and semi-mature people and that
no matter how much information you have access to, if one’s beliefs are set
(early in the Reddit/Broski/Goon forum crèche/Madrasa) then just having access
to counter information rarely changes a person’s world view, be that world real
or virtual. No, the truly Goonborn see all counter data as ‘propaganda’ against
their kind… and react with aggression and hatred against it Irregardless of
truth or right & wrong.

As I said before, to stay with the heard, to
remain in the group, to be “accepted” by your peers is a very very strong force
in human nature. Propaganda plays directly to this strong emotional force… one
old time proven example is…

“YOU will
burn for ETERNITY in HELL if you don’t toe the (insert religion of your
choice) line!!!!”

The corollary being the…

“ALL the rest
of us GOOD people will lay in comfort on clouds, LOL at you while eating grapes
from the hands of nubile, randy, horney virgins FOREVER because we were good
and did as (insert religion of your choice) told us to."

On an aside, and a question for the student:

“Why do the Jihadists get to have sex in heaven
while Christians of all colors evidently don’t?”Answer: DAMN good piece of propaganda right
there all by itself.

So, on to the New Eden Propaganda
Vulnerability Test…

It’s quite simple really. You see there is a new
political movement in New Eden, oh it’s actually an age old movement really,
but it is being dressed and dolled up and trotted out like it’s something new.
And it has a new charismatic Führer… oh, umm, I meant leader… who is using all the
time honored skills and tools of propaganda to further his personal goals and
agenda… I of course speak of James 315, his cult of The New Order and his run
for CSM8 on a platform of ultimately, “Ridding Hisec of The Carebear Menace.”
(nope no links, go look ‘im up yerself…) I give you just a small taste if what
James315 is all about…

The test? Go and read a few posts on
Minerbumping.com then score yourself below:

(1) If you find you are stunned by the utter
lack of any actual intelligent reasoning and or any ‘real’ content in any post on his
site, give yourself a score of ‘1’ [Not gullible].

You are a mature and intelligent person capable and
prepared to make your own decisions.

(2) If you can continue to read after 2 full
posts or more, and you find yourself, against your better judgment mind you
(that queasy feeling in the pit of your stomach), asking yourself if there really
might be something worthwhile there… give yourself a score of ‘2’, [Potentially
Gullible].

You may possibly be gullible to rhetoric and propaganda
and cults etc., etc. If you stop, take a good hard look at your values and the
teachings of your family and culture, if you are willing to stand up for what
you know is right, then you can still take full control of yourself and your
life… but, you are at risk.

(3) If you not only can read several of James315’s
posts back to back but find yourself grinning and LOLing a little and agreeing
with ‘any’ part of his rhetoric… if you see ALL those people who have
contributed and commented so positively as being any kind of recommendation of
his position or platform, give yourself a score of ‘3’, [Gullible].

You are someone who can be swayed by public opinion
(real or made up), you are someone who looks to the crowd for guidance and who
wants to be accepted and one-of-the-guys more than you care about right and
wrong… you are very much at risk of being nothing more than a follower and a
hanger-on.

(4) If, after reading a few posts, you feel a
strong need to look up James315’s other rhetoric and posts on forums and elsewhere,
if you decide to send him ISK, if you post a comment in support of his policies…
give yourself a score of ‘4’ [Fully Gullible]

And relax… you are not at risk, you are, or will
be one day soon, a good mindless sheep, a follower of others thoughts and fulfiller
of others needs and desires living your life in lockstep with legions of
mindless masses… In fact, once you spent some time on James315’s site I doubt
you came back here at all…

Fly Safe and see you in the Sky =/|)=

NOTE: If, as you read this, you saw just how blatantly
I tried to propagandize my beliefs and feelings against all that James 315 and
his ilk stand for, then you pass, have a cookie.

If you didn’t, well… James is always looking for
a few good sycophants.

“The brainchild of the Blogfather, Crazy Kinux,
blog banters are single subjects discussed across the EVE blogging community.
It encourages the sharing of ideas and cross-pollination of readership. All in
all a healthy thing for a community.“

Friday, February 22, 2013

This post, as so many do, began as a comment… for the
genesis please read Blake’s “Sagain Kickout
Station” over at K162Space. That post
deals with what are called, Kickout Stations and their inherent evils… To synopsize,
the Sagain
V – Inherent Implants Biotech Production sucks. It sucks because, as all
stations do, it unceremoniously boots yer ass out outta the undock at a fair
clip… the problem w/ Sagain V-IIBPS is due to the stations ‘physical’ design,
you are booted out past docking range every time. Blake couldn’t even get a
shuttle to STOP inside docking range, so a Freighter or Indy doesn’t have a
chance in H-E dubble toothpick… all the gankers gotta do is ‘keep’ you outta
range, not bump you outta range… hence the 6 multi-bISK ganks in Feb alone.

Now, while I fully agree that the Sagain V-IIBPS station’s
design is an issue (unlike ALL other designs where you exit via something that looks like a docking port, Amarr stations SHIT you out their ass) and, for me personally, is just one more reason I
hate-all-things-Amarr... but... the main issue here is not Crappy Cruddy
Poor Station Design + Undock Mechanics
(though the gods KNOW how badly I'd like to see those corrected) the issue is,
as always, Piss Poor Piloting.

Mucked-Up Muthrfrakkin Mechanics can be overcome by
Proper Prior Planning and Preemptive Piloting... as we have covered, you ALWAYS
undock at wayyyyyy above the max velocity of a laden swallow, or for that
matter an unladen swallow, or hell even an MWD/Nano fit swallow, much less a
Freighter... or an Indy... Hmmmm… waitaminnit didyousay wayyyy “above” the max
velocity right? Hmmmmm well now that means that if, I say “IF” you only had
something to ‘warp-to’ without having to re-align… well, in that case you might
just go to warp faster than that there MWD/Nano Swallow even!

So, The Perceptive and Prepared Pilot gets him a ship
what goes really really fast, and makes some insta-warp BMs out from the undock…
but not “Straight” out. Why not straight out? Well, I’ll tell ya… you have a
few degrees of latitude from dead ahead in which the game see’s your ship as
fully aligned so you set course not “DEAD” ahead, but say 3 or 5 degrees at 12’oclock
or 3 to 5 degrees at 7’oclock or somesuch… then max burn out to say... 1200km
and make a BM, then 2800km and make a BM and mebbe even 5400km too for good
measure.

Why a few degrees off the straight and level you ask? Well,
a few degrees at the dock can be tens of meters off of the ‘straight and level’
at a several hundred km out and up to a hundred meters off of the ‘straight and
level’ at several thousand km out. The farther out your insta-warp BM, the
greater the lateral separation between your landing zone and the landing zone
for a ‘straight and level’ insta-warp.

OK, so why the weird BM range numbers you ask? Ever
insta-warped out to 500, 1000, 2000 or even 5000km from a popular gank
station?? If you have 'nough said, if you haven't do so some time and strangely
enough you will often find a fast frig or interceptor, or two even, hanging out
doing fuk all, at those very nice 'even' distances from the undock... Now why could
that be Hmmm? Maybe because people are PREDICKTABLE, so don't you be a PreDICK…
But, these gank scouts ‘tend’ to be on the ‘straight and level’ warpline from
the station (<- see, PREDICKTABLE) so, a few degrees lateral offset combined
with an uneven landing range puts you well out of any possible interception by said
Ganking Scouts with “Warp to ME!!’ DPS support.

Follow this sage advice and…

(1) ALWAYS move valuable cargo with SCOUTS (yes, plural);

(2) undock and immediately spam the livin' crap outta 'warp-to'
to one of your insta-undocks;

(2a) then give
the gankers the ASCII 'finger' in local as you warp right though them;

Sunday, February 17, 2013

Just an update really… I am not ROBOBLOGGER like Ripard over on Jester’s Trek, and I usually only have a post burble up in the greymatter tween
my ears for a Banter or when something of note
happens… and neither is ATM but I dunt like to let this Blog lie idle too long…
might lose one of the 8 who actually read it… that would be a 12.5% drop in my
over all readership… can’t have that now can we? =]

Yea, we moved into a Class 6 wormhole with SYJ Alliance and we are
safer (due to numbers, skillz & attitude these bros have) and we are potentially
richer (C6 Sleepers, BEST L&S in Anoikis!). These guys have the sites &
spawns, ships & fits and Fleet doctrines and FCs to run them handily… they chat and shoot the shit, calmly almost... bored... while they shoot and kill C6 Sleeper
Sites such as… the ‘Forgotten Core Circuitry
Disassembler’ and… the ‘Unsecured Core Emergence’ (just to name 2 of the 8 sites
normal to a C6…) in which, with a full
Capitol escalation, you can go up against a total of: 34 Sleeper BSes; 3 Argos;
4 sentry guns; 33 Cruisers and 44 Frigates…
Sleeper Fleet: 118 ships, guns & sentry turrets.For them as dunt wanna click the links, a summary of one site…

All
sleepers will auto aggress; Sleepers will switch targets… drones and support
ships are not immune.

These guys are so active… or, I guess I should say ‘we are so
active’ now shouldn’t I? I mean I have already been on a Low Roam where we got
a Cap kill, run sites where making under 100 mISK is cause you missed 3 of the
4 sites we ran… and everyday there is something going on, a lowsec roam,
scanning the pipe for profit and
adventure, a POCO Bash for the LULZ, an Op for a paying customer or a
Friendly Corp/Alliance… or even a POCO Camp, that being we found a group
bashing POCOs in their homehole an so we decided to jump the POCO bashers… for
the LULZ… and that’s the short list.

But, as many know I have a bad case of RL>EvE occasionally so I
have not been as ‘active’ as I would prefer… and in that time I was ‘trapped in
Empire’ as we put is when one cannot make it to a pipe or other things get in
the way of one getting back in the hole from an Empire run or roam or whatever.
I got back in a few days ago after most of a week in Hi and I got my Alliance
Approved ™ Armor Loki and Shield Rapier in the hole for sites PLUS my Venture…
and while ya’ll know I love me my Venture, you also know I HATE mining… not
only do I personally find it monotonous in the extreme but TBH it simply is not
“really” profitable unless you can do the REAL CAREBEAR ™ and fit for max yield
with Orca (and mebbe Rorqual) support and mine with Fleet Bonuses… then and
only then can you make ISK at a rate that begins to tickle my fancy… unless yer
inna hole.

Mining in hole has always been a lucrative proposition, the problem
is, it is also one of the MOST dangewus jobs in EvE, support fleet or not… at
least, it used to be. With the buffs to the Retriever and Procurer and with the
new Venture, mining in Anokis is not only incredibly profitable… but it is much easier now, in a well watched and active hole, with a fleet & support to mine
up a very respectable profits in a very reasonable time… and in the Venture…
it’s down-right fun too. =]

You know... the Venture has opened a new, emergent, gameplay I personally had never heard of before now. Ninja Mining™. Yup... think on those two words... "ninja" + "mining"... they just don't seem to go together now do they?

We have always raided statics 'next door' as twere... you know, pop a static into a hole with a POS or two but nobodies home and there are sites!! RAID!!!! You take down the sites and hoover up the L&S before the owners wake up... But now, with the Venture, we are also raiding Gas sites like theVital Core Reservoir. The Venture is so fast and efficient that a fleet of em can wipe out a decent number of Gas sites in fair order.So, you get eyes on the POS(s), eyes on the outbound static and then bring in Team Venture! They hammer the Gas sites while the scouts provide Perimeter Security and Early Warning. Then go go GO! LOL too funny... and DAMNED profitable too.

If you have never run scout duty or are ever curious as to what cloaky scouting in Anoikis is like... I found a way to virtually 'share' this experience... OK, imagine you are in a cloaked probe frig, or bomber. You have basically untanked ships in fleet that YOU are the only protection for. Your ability to call out an Early Warning giving them time to GTFO is crucial to the success of the operation...

So, you are cloaked and sitting 100km off a hostile POS in unknown deadly space, with a Moros (Dread) and a Thanatos (Carrier) floating innit... you have a full set of Sisters Core Scanner Probes out in a full coverage configuration... overlap blanketing of the whole system. You have removed (ignored) all current active sigs & anoms...

Your job, should you choose to accept it, is to watch that POS like a hawk for ANY movement AND to cycle your probes looking for any new sigs/anoms popping up in scan range... OK? That's the job. If you go AFK, you risk having hostiles pop through a new hole YOU dint call out a warning for, hence leaving your fleetmates out in the cold hard black with hostile ships warping in on them...

But, I dint go AFK and we warped out having ninja'ed up a fair number of gas sites, scouts out last. Later, my wallet flashed... a full share (over 120+ mISK)... easy money. OK, now you get to see how "easy" this money really was... all you have to do is click on the graphic below, view it full screen... and then sit and just WATCH it for FOURTYFIVE minutes... I earned that 120+ mil...

If you were to ever were to pop though a hole into SYJ’s Alliance
homehole… well, the number of Lrg POSes on dscan alone would make you wet your panties… and the number of ship bumbling around when we are most active… would
make even a hardened Anoikis vet think
to himself… “Self, we need to go and get a pint… or two… and think long and
hard on doing ANTHING in here…. except mebbe, exit (cloaked and quietly) stage
left… =]

Or better… pop though when we are on an op… Rapiers n Moros n Tengu,
Tengu, Tengu, Tengu n Caps n Dreads on scan!! Of course… we get, well, none
that I have seen of the usual solo wormhole ‘tourists’ that one gets lots of
with Hi Empire statics, a few of with Lo Empire statics, and very few from null.
We have a static that always leads to another upper class hole so our uninvited
guests are almost always other wormhole non-allied corps, who jump to mass
close the hole when they count the number of ships and Caps and POSes on scan…
or… other wormhole Alliances, that give us a good once over to decide whether
they feel like giving us a go. It does happen. We aren’t EvE’s biggest Anoikis Alliance,
but SYJ IS a PvP focused Alliance and we actively seek out the fights, good,
bad and just plain silly…

We recently found some possibly ToO’s (Targets of Opportunity) in
the pipe we were scanning down and the FC decided to do a general call up (IE
anyone who wants to, fleet up, ‘x’ type ships, and meet up at the static) for a
fleet to give them a go. This is still early in my career with SYJ so I am not
going to try and give a Battle Report or any kind of After Action Report… Let’s
just say we scouted, they scouted, we jumped, they jumped, we fired, they fired…
and for roughly 20 minutes we swapped DPS/ECM/neuts/etc… with the end loss of
only 1 ship on our side. Weirdest fight I have been in yet. Seems the combo of
the weather, Class
6 Pulsar, and both fleets being in shield ships meant that shield EHP, Targeting
Range and Ship Sig was DOUBLED while CAP recharge was HALVED…

This means ANY Shield Repping and all Neuting was hilariously effective…
and they had a Carrier in triage at the hole. We had a Logi CAP chain
supporting us so… all we really did was expend a seriously silly amount of ammo
for basically nothing. I have never seen the like. I was in a Drake, and in each
engagement, I think we had 2, we disengaged once and jumped back when the
Carrier warped off, but then he came back… but In each instance I immediately
burned for optimal range and put all missiles and drones on the Primary as
called… This was the first fight I had been in where I had enough time to calm
down enough to do some things I have never done before in a fight.

At the FCs command, I intentionally overheated my missile launchers
and MWD… never did that afore… then, also for the very first time in my New
Eden career… I found myself actually getting UP and quickly refilling my drink (the
fridge is only like 3 feet from me but…) DURING A FIGHT. NEVER have I EVER
thought THAT would happen… but we just fired on each other for like SOOOOOOOOO damn
LONG… sheesh. =]

Finally we broke off and kept the fleet together while our probers
scouted a way to Empire… “All holes eventually lead to Empire.” It was the
first time I had heard that… but it’s now in my personal lexicon. We had a
number of holes to transit but they finally found us a nice C1 static only 2
hops from Amarr… LOL. Quite a few of us docked up and did repairs etc. while
the probers from home found us a new pipe back… and then it was warp jump warp
and home again home again.

After we got home I realized that while I was docked in Amarr I
had not repaired my lightly toasted missile launchers… so I used some Nanite
Repair Paste… for the very first time… and I have had that skill at 3 for like
2 years, I even had to google HOW to use it… LOL… whatta night. =]

Them as what follow me...

Graphiti...

Round and round we go...

Fav Post Bytes...

"Maybe we're not that different after all and I have my own reality to get to grips with."Absence of Substance

Now THAT is wisdom...

We are, each and alone, the absolute center of our subjective 'verse... this is the way of life.To see another's POV as if it were your own... this is the way of truth...To allow that some others have POVs you cannot and will never understand, and yet accept them as they are, this is the way of acceptance...To kill them all without rancor or anger, but in brotherhood... this is the way of EVE.

This Is What We DO!!!

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